Penn professor, poet, and performer Simone White was named associate faculty director of the Kelly Writers House on Oct. 10.
White joined the Penn faculty in 2018 and was named a Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor of English two years later. Alongside KWH Faculty Director Al Filreis, she taught a KWH Fellows seminar — an annual program that features three writers who make extended visits to the House and to the class.
She will now join Filreis and KWH Director Jessica Lowenthal in her new role at KWH.
“Simone has already been an active and much admired member of the Writers House community,” Filreis wrote in his blog. “Teaching the Writers House Fellows seminar with her has been a dream. She is a truly great poet, has both natural and deeply learned instincts as a project- and event-maker, and leads in the most collaborative and conscientious way.”
Outside of Penn, White is a poet, artist, performer, and critic. She received the Whiting Award in 2017, the Creative Capital Award in 2021, and the Dorothea Tanning Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2023. Her books, poetry collections, and critical essays have been published in Duke University Press and featured in The New York Times, among other publications.
As associate faculty director of KWH, White will continue her work engaging with Penn students and the larger Philadelphia community. In particular, she will oversee the Kelly Writers House Fellows Seminar and work on developing a new program series focusing on intersections of music, visual arts, poetics, sound studies, theory, and performance. She will also take on an active role in planning for the future of KWH, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2026.
“The Writers House has a legacy of celebrating literature as a form of gathering together, an ethic I share as a teacher and a poet.” White said. “I look forward to working with Al, Jessica, and the staff of Kelly Writers House to share our joy in studying and making literary art with students, the wider Penn and Philadelphia communities, and visitors from all over the world.”
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